Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Indiegogo To Add Option For Companies To Embed Crowdfunding Campaigns On Own Websites

There is no shortage of crowdfunding websites out there, vying to help you raise cash for your big idea but the two highest profile outfits remain Kickstarter and Indiegogo — the former having the reputation of the 800 pound gorilla in the crowdfunding room.
According to research we covered last summer, Kickstarter was responsible for raising around 6x more successful funding than Indiegogo (Indiegogo did dispute that research, however).
Whatever the truth, the perception remains that Indiegogo plays second fiddle to Kickstarter. Which gives it all the more reason to broaden out its feature-set to crank up its appeal. Case in point: it’s announced a plan to extended its reach with the launch of a tool, called Indiegogo Outpost, that will let companies run Indiegogo crowdfunding campaigns as embeds on their own websites.
What’s the point of that? It says the idea is to allow companies with large followings/powerful existing brands of their own to leverage the traffic and energy that’s directed at their own website.
“We’re always looking for new ways to help Indiegogo campaigns directly engage with audiences who are likely to support them,” said Slava Rubin, Indiegogo co-founder and CEO, in a statement coming on the planned launch.
Outpost campaigns won’t be exclusively out on a limb. They will also get a mirrored campaign on Indiegogo’s website so the company running an Outpost campaign still gets to tap into its nine million monthly unique visitors — in a ‘have your cake & eat it’ type scenario.
Beyond that, the tool also, of course, adds another string to Indiegogo’s bow in the feature-set competition with Kickstarter.
Indiegogo said Outpost campaigns will be able to use its own campaign analytics tools, or integrate third party tools such as Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, Mixpanel or Facebook retargeting if they prefer.
They can also still be included in Indiegogo’s own marketing channels. And Outposters will get support from Indiegogo in the form of access to its educational resources, Trust and Safety team, and Customer Happiness team.
The Outpost tool is due to launch in the first quarter of this year. There will be no setup fees for activating Outpost — which Indiegogo said uses the same HTML and JavaScript embedding technologies that products such as Google Maps, Facebook commenting, and Google Analytics use to enhance external websites.
One potential risk associated with extending the reach of crowdfunding off of a central hub website is that scammers might seek to take advantage to run bogus crowdfunding campaigns which aren’t in any way affiliated with Indiegogo. Of course such campaigns wouldn’t have any mirror on the main Indiegogo website — so that’s one way for future crowdfunders to verify that an Indiegogo Outpost campaign is bona fide.